


Power Rangers- Smosh Squad

by Evilicequeen19



Category: Smosh
Genre: Alternate Universe, Eventual Relationships, F/F, F/M, M/M, Out of Character, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-07-08 07:03:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 9,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15925328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evilicequeen19/pseuds/Evilicequeen19
Summary: Shayne Topp, Noah Grossman, Olivia Sui, Keith Leak Jr., and Courtney Miller. They all live in the same town and go to the same high school. None of them really know each other, but when a twist of fate lands them all in an unusual circumstance, they must learn to rely on each other to protect their town and the world... and become the Power Rangers.My first fanfic. Based from the recent power rangers movie- plot elements from there are not my own. will eventually evolve past the movie plot. The smosh gang will be OOC for the most part at the beginning, but will get there.





	1. Shayne

Today was not an ordinary day for Shayne Topp. 

For starters, Shayne was never driven to school by his father. Then again, Shayne did not normally have fiery red hair, or an ankle monitor. It had not been a good week for him.

Shayne dangled one hand out of the open car window. He slouched lower than usual in the seat, wishing he was in his own car. He liked driving his red pick-up; most days he would take a circuitous route to the school with his windows cracked for a breeze and his stereo blaring. His football buddies liked to race each other for the front most parking spaces, mostly because the first space available for students was right next to the parking space reserved for Ms. Whittle (who was indisputably the hottest teacher in the school). Shayne never participated in the race. He enjoyed parking in the very back of the lot and watching his teammates fight over the “honor” of being the closest car to hers. He figured a lot of the guys dreamt of getting a little extra attention from her, so to speak, but he never saw the appeal. The guys who did were the more desperate guys on the team, like Matt Sohinki. Shayne didn’t need the attention of a hot teacher to be popular; with his own good looks, natural athletic ability, and quarterback position on the football team, he was set.  


Or rather, he had been set.  


The weirdness of the past week was his own fault- he knew he shouldn’t have gone along with the stupid prank. There was no point putting a live bull in the locker room of their rival team (the Cali grove Bulls) the night before the homecoming game, it wouldn’t help their team play any better. So, when Sohinki and his buddy Wesley Johnson had suggested doing that, Shayne had said no. But Sohinki had not let it drop and kept insisting that as the upperclassmen they had to show the team that ballsy moves paid off, and eventually Shayne had agreed to shut him up. Shayne had met Sohinki and Wes at Cali grove high school in his pick up, and was nervous when he discovered that the two had stolen a male cow out of a pasture. But he still helped them unload the bull and lead it to the school entrance. It was there that it all went downhill for him.  
Wes and Sohinki had gone back to their truck under the guise of getting more feed to keep the bull calm, but once they had gotten to their truck they hopped in and zoomed off, leaving Shayne in front of the school entrance with the bull. At the same time, a voice shouted “Hey Quarterback!” from above him, and Shayne looked up to see some of the members of the Bulls football team. “Enjoy the game!” they had continued, and in the next moment he was covered in red paint, which was one of the Bulls team colors.  


Then the police had come.  


He had been royally screwed. Sohinki and Wes had snuck out of Wes’s house to do the prank and snuck back in successfully, so when Shayne tried to tell officer Bereta that he had not acted alone, Wes’s mother confirmed Sohinki and Wes’s alibi. The farmer the bull was stolen from had only seen one boy and a pick-up truck, and the Bulls football players told officer Bereta they had only seen who they had hit with paint. Shayne had been sentenced with three months of house arrest and 100 hours of community service. Plus, the paint had stained his usually dirty blonde hair bright red, and to top it all off, he had completely lost his parent’s trust. Thus, the rides to and from school.  


The school hadn’t let him off lightly either. He was kicked off the football team and given 12 weeks of Saturday detention, as attempted vandalism was against the school’s values.  
His fall from social grace was as swift as the defeat of his former football team during the homecoming game. The Cali grove Bulls crushed the Eastern heights Knights, and his status as pariah at school was cemented within 48 hours. “Some senior year this is going to be”, Shayne thought as his father pulled up to the curb in front of Eastern heights High School.  


His father looked over at him disapprovingly as he sat up from his slouch and began to open the door. “Try not to do anything stupid, son.” He said.  


Shayne shut the car door in reply. He slung his dark gray backpack around one shoulder as his father pulled away from the curb and began making his way up the lawn to the entrance of the school.  


“Yo Red Bull!” someone shouted across the lawn. Shayne rolled his eyes and kept walking. “Red Bull” was what most of the kids had taken to calling him in the week following the disastrous homecoming game, especially the football team and the dance team. The dance team was essentially their school’s version of cheerleaders. They danced at every football game, baseball game, and wrestling match. They were just as popular as a stereotypical cheerleader would be, and most of them were just as nasty. Shayne was never bothered by it, until now.  


“Hey!” the voice was much closer now. Shayne stopped and turned to face Sohinki, Wes, and a junior on the team, Damien Haas. Sohinki and Wes were grinning maliciously. They were now basically running the football team, and hadn’t yet missed an opportunity to heckle him. Shayne thought that they might have set him up on purpose to get him kicked off the team. Damien however looked fairly uncomfortable; he was fidgeting and wouldn’t look Shayne in the eye. Damien and Shayne had been good buddies on the football team and usually had a great time making plays together, and Shayne was admittedly a bit disappointed Damien hadn’t been brave enough to continue hanging out with him after he’d been shunned.  


Shayne sighed. “What do you want.” He said flatly. Wes laughed.  


“Just to remind you how big of a failure you are.” He said lightly.  


“Our season is tanked without you, Ginge.” Sohinki jumped in, still grinning like the Cheshire cat.  


“Isn’t that more of an insult to your lack of skills?” Shayne shot back, and then turned to keep walking toward the school entrance.  


“Hey, come back here and say that to our faces!” Shayne heard Wes shout. He could barely make out Damien point out that Shayne had, in fact, said it to their faces. Sohinki was telling him to shut up when Shayne pushed open the double doors to the school’s main entrance.  


It was going to be a long Friday.


	2. Noah

Noah breathed a sigh of relief as he reached his locker and began to twist the knob on the lock. He had been anticipating an interruption from one of his many in school tormentors.

Noah knew he was skinny and gangly; between that and his thick glasses he really couldn’t see without, he’d been a prime target for bullies since elementary school, and it had gotten even worse when he’d taken to dying his hair bright colors every few weeks. It didn’t even matter that he was more athletic than the average nerd; he’d gone on countless father and son bonding trips with his dad before he’d been killed overseas. His dad had been in the Army, so Noah knew a ton about survival and was a pretty decent runner and climber. But his athleticism actually tended to make things worse for him- when he’d climbed the rope in gym class sophomore year and rang the bell at the top faster than everyone except golden boy Shayne Topp, he’d been teased for his appearance even more ruthlessly than usual by the jock dummies Sohinki and Wesley.

Noah could handle those two; he usually either pretended he couldn’t hear them when they insulted him, and ignored them when they pelted him with paper footballs in Study Hall. He liked his appearance; his frames for his glasses had been his father’s and dying his hair was fun and relaxing, so it was easy to ignore them.

Slightly harder for Noah was ignoring the jabs of Olivia Sui and her dance team. They were just as superficially cruel as Wes and Sohinki, but they were far smarter and sneakier about their jabs. Cruel, yes, but they were still only words.

No, the bully that bothered him far worse was Lasercorn.

Lasercorn wasn’t the guy’s real name, all the teachers called him David. But Noah knew that if anyone in the student body ever called Lasercorn “David” they were getting a shove into the nearest open locker. Noah had learned that the hard way his freshman year. Lasercorn had been a junior then, and had since repeated junior year and senior year, and the damn kid had never passed up an opportunity to shove Noah, to smack his books out of his arms, spill his lunch tray, you name it. Noah had no idea what he’d done to piss Lasercorn off so badly. Plenty of freshmen had made the same mistake that he had, so he didn’t know what the deal was. Either way, he only had one more year to attempt to avoid him, and then he was on to UC Davis for Engineering.

Noah was normally glad to get through a morning walk to his locker without a run in with Lasercorn, but today was a special occasion. He’d brought his father’s old maps for a mountainside near his house and some *potentially* explosive inducing wiring from his father’s basement. The last thing he needed was Lasercorn ruining either of those things.

He and his father had shared a love of topography and a collection of rocks. It was very extensive, ranging from common sedimentary rocks Noah had picked up on hikes as a child and ranging to rare types of molten rock from across the world, and cool looking rocks that had no value but were one of a kind due to shape or odd coloring. Before he had died his father had told Noah he thought some rare types of crystal, or maybe even fossils, could be embedded in the mountainside near their house. When he had gone overseas Noah went to the mountain every afternoon on his bike (which was no easy feat) to map out the area to find the best place to *not so legally* dig into the mountainside. He was hoping to surprise his father when he’d come home.

Obviously, that would never happen.

Noah was not deterred by his father’s death. It had definitely stopped him temporarily, but by now his father had died over a year ago and Noah found that when he started missing him more than usual, doing something that helped him feel close to him helped ease the ache. He’d completed his maps, found the ideal place in the mountain to dig, and he was just recently very close to figuring out the right wiring to make the explosives his father had hidden in the basement work. It was a bit of tricky engineering because Noah only wanted to wire a charge strong enough to dig into the side of the mountain, not create a landslide. But too little and he wouldn’t dig deep enough to find anything. 

And then there was the issue of getting the wiring to work so the charge would blow when Noah wanted it to. He was really careful about that after the unfortunate incident with his lunch box two weeks ago. He’d earned Saturday detention for half the school year and had only avoided worse because he (truthfully) claimed he’d had no idea what was inside his lunch box was primed to explode.

Noah opened his locker and carefully put his maps and wires on the top shelf. He was going to spend his study hall outside fiddling with the wires and studying the maps, but that wouldn’t be until after lunch. For now, he grabbed his physics textbook and homework and began to make his way toward his homeroom.

He had almost reached the doorway to the classroom when he caught sight of the head of flaming orange hair that was Lasercorn standing a few lockers away chatting with his friend Keith. Keith Leak Jr. and Noah had been best friends in elementary school, despite having polar opposite interests. Noah helped Keith with his math homework and would bring him along to explore the woods and mountains behind his house, and Keith would help Noah with the social side of school.

That had been until Noah’s dad was deployed the first time. Keith had been really weird about it, especially when Noah talked about how badly he missed his dad. They eventually stopped hanging around with each other, and Keith fell in with Lasercorn and his friends when they got to high school. When Noah’s dad passed Keith had come to the funeral and had tried to talk to Noah, but Noah hadn’t let him. Noah didn’t really care what Keith thought anymore.

Noah tried to avoid being seen by Lasercorn, but there was only so much he could do. His light blue curls stood out almost as much as Lasercorn’s signature orange. Lasercorn tripped him smoothly as he passed by and before Noah could do anything he was sprawled out on the floor of the hallway. He watched the feet of his tormentor walk down the hallway and heard Lasercorn’s laugh. As Lasercorn and Keith entered a classroom Noah could have sworn he’d heard Keith saying “Why do you always have to do him like that man?”, but it could have been his imagination.

Noah was starting to stand back up again when a hand was offered to him. Noah noticed the edges of the boy’s fingernails were ringed with red, as if he’d painted them and then tried to remove the polish. Noah took the offered hand and found himself face to face with Shayne Topp, the quarterback and resident pretty boy. Except Shayne looked different today. His hair was red, a very fake looking red that was brighter at the top and splotchy at the bottom. It was as if he’d tried to dye it from the top down and the effect was not very attractive at all.

“Uh, thank you.” Noah spluttered. Usually Shayne and Noah barely paid each other any attention, despite having been classmates since kindergarten, so it was weird to Noah that Shayne would think to offer him a hand.

“Yeah, don’t mention it” Shayne said. He started to turn away from Noah when Noah surprised himself by speaking again.

“You know, your hair, uh, did you do it yourself? Or did someone do it for you? Because it, uh, doesn’t look right.”

Shayne turned back to Noah. Noah flushed bright red. “I like the color though. Red kind of suits you, in a way. Would be better if it was a little more muted though…” Noah trailed off. He’d babbled again.

Shaye was giving him a weird look. “No, I didn’t do this myself. I didn’t want it done, either.” He said slowly. He was looking at Noah as if he was trying to figure him out. The look was piercing and Noah didn’t like it much. He started fidgeting.

“Ah, well, I’m sorry. It’ll fade soon if they used store bought dye.” Noah said quickly. He turned away and quickly slide into his homeroom classroom, leaving Shayne in the hallway staring after him.


	3. Olivia

Olivia Sui was usually bored in History class. They had spent most of the month going over the events leading up to the Revolutionary War again, and Olivia had much more important things she could be doing. She was the captain of the Eastern Heights dance team after all- there were new routines to choreograph, dance moves to learn, formations to perfect, and a team to run.

And there was nothing Olivia did better than keep her girls in line.

Olivia didn’t care that a lot of her classmates thought of her as a bitch. She often heard it whispered through the hallways when people thought she wasn’t near, or saw it scrawled in Sharpie inside the stalls of the bathroom. So what? The dance team and the football team ran this school, and as captain of the dance team she was basically royalty. Not everyone likes those in power, Olivia would think to herself whenever things like that would happen. 

Usually Olivia spent History class playing with her long, raven hair (today she had straightened it and pulled it back into a high ponytail to show off her new hoop earrings), or else she would play games on her phone and talk to her friend Lee, who sat across the room. Lee was her second in command on the dance team and could always be counted on for gossip.

But today Olivia was distracted. The girl who sat diagonally from her was missing from this class again, as she had been for three days now. Olivia saw her before homeroom this morning; she had been shoving papers into her locker and ignoring Lee, who was standing over her shoulder heckling her about something or other, but here was History and she was again a no show.

And Olivia didn’t understand why she cared so much.

It was true Olivia occasionally enjoyed watching the girl sketch during class; the day she drew Mr. Raub as a cartoon she had laughed out loud during class and had needed to explain it away to Mr. Raub (Sorry, I just got your joke about the Tea Party! Great stuff man.) and later to Lee (Keith asked if I wanted a dick pick, how desperate can you get?). So what if neither was true? She had to protect her reputation, and that meant not getting caught laughing at some nobody’s sketches during class then it was worth it. But Olivia had never thought watching a girl goof off in history class from time to time meant she cared what that girl did.

She hadn’t cared at all when the girl showed up for school on Tuesday with her long blonde hair chopped off into messy waves. And so what if she had skipped out on this class three times now? She didn’t care. She could care less.

She pulled her phone out of the pocket of her dance team varsity jacket. She had seen Lee “talking” to the girl earlier. Maybe she knew why she wasn’t here.

LivLiv: hey do u kno where the girl that usually sits by me is?  
LeeLee: oh u mean miller? prob left after this morning, u hear abt her?  
LivLiv: no  
LeeLee: u kno how shes like artsy and shit? she’s in karen’s art class and u kno karen, shes nice to evryone. she and karen had been texting and stuff and karen told sohink and I that she felt like miller was being flirty

Olivia paused reading. Karen was the nicest, dumbest, and most flirtatious member of the dance team. If “Miller” was flirting it was probably because Karen had been flirting first. And now Karen’s boyfriend Matt Sohinki was involved, so things were about to get really interesting.

LeeLee: so after practice mon sohink and I went to karen’s and he grabbed her phone and started messaging miller and being rlly super flirty to see what would happen and guess what did  
LivLiv: what?  
LeeLee: guess  
LivLiv: lee  
LeeLee: ok ok. She told karen she thought she was sweet and they should hang out sometime and sent a pic of her ass!  
LivLiv: what?!?  
LeeLee: well we arnt sure she meant to it was a reflection of her ass in a mirror but we still have it- sohink and i have been sending it around. u havent seen????  
LeeLee: [image2554]  
LeeLee: isn’t that crazy? now shes gay AND a slut

Olivia didn’t open the picture. She didn’t want to answer Lee. But she had to.

LivLiv: that is crazy

Olivia put her phone away, feeling more uneasy than before, and still bothered that she was so bothered by this. Pictures like that happened every so often at this school; she sometimes spread them along herself, even though she knew it was wrong. They were a part of the high school food chain and who was she to mess with it?

So what was it about this girl that made it feel so awful? She didn’t even know her name. She had never needed to; the dance team and the football team were all she needed. She didn’t need to feel bad about that girl, or spend anymore time thinking about why she was skipping, or why she had chopped off her pretty long hair in favor of a messy shoulder length bob (even though Olivia had thought that was pretty too, in an edgy sort of way).

Whatever, Olivia definitely didn’t care. She couldn’t. There were things that mattered more to her.

So why did this feel so important?


	4. Shayne

Shayne pulled his bagged lunch out of his locker and made his way purposefully toward the cafeteria for the first time that week. He’d taken to eating in the library while reading comic books recently, because it was quieter for him. But today he wanted to find Noah Grossman. 

He’d helped him up after Lasercorn had knocked him down; it was just the decent thing to do. But then Noah asked about his hair and it became apparent to Shayne that Noah hadn’t been paying enough attention to school drama (or the local news) to know what he had done, and therefore wouldn’t give him crap for it 24/7.

Plus, maybe Noah would be able to fix his hair.

He strode briskly into the cafeteria, trying to avoid catching anyone’s eye. He gave the full room a scan but didn’t immediately spot the light blue shock of hair that was Noah. It was a fairly large cafeteria though. Shayne made a quick circle, and to his surprise only seemed to catch the attention of Keith Leak Jr., who was watching him curiously from his seat next to Lasercorn. Keith didn't call attention to him, which Shayne felt was lucky. In fact, Keith himself seemed to be glancing around the cafeteria too. Was he also looking for someone?

After a full circle of the cafeteria and another quick scan of the room Shayne concluded that Noah was not in the cafeteria. Where could he be? He left the room and walked down the hallway to check the library. The Librarian waved cheerfully at him when he stepped through the entrance. Shayne returned the wave, but still failed to see Noah at the tables in the library. He ran a hand through his red stained hair in mild frustration, and then turned and left the library doorway and walked toward the large double doors of the school’s entrance. Outside was the only other possible place Noah could be during lunch, if he hadn’t left campus. While seniors were allowed to eat lunch outside, they weren’t allowed to leave campus for lunch, and Noah didn’t strike Shayne as much of a rule breaker.

Shayne stepped outside and finally spotted Noah, sitting under a maple tree to the left of the concrete walkway leading toward the school. His lunch was lying aside of him (largely untouched) and he was fiddling with a small tangle of different colored wires. A large book was propped up against the maple tree so that Noah could read it without looking down.

Shayne cautiously made his way over to where Noah was engrossed in the wires. He didn’t want to disturb him, but as much as Shayne hated to admit it, the past week had left him feeling very lonely. So when he got closer to Noah he took a deep breath and spoke.

“Hey Noah.”

Noah whirled around, startled. His expression did not relax when he saw it was Shayne.

“Shayne. Hi.” Noah said. He sounded quite bewildered.

Shayne took a seat on the grass next to Noah and began pulling things out of his lunch bag. Noah just stared at him, as if shocked that Shayne had sought him out. Shayne didn’t blame him; it wasn’t as if he had paid him much attention before today.

“What are you working on?” Shayne asked after a few moments of awkward silence, gesturing toward the mess of wires that was now laying on the blue-haired boy’s lap.

Noah hesitated, absentmindedly running a hand through his hair, and then said “It can’t blow up now, but I’m trying to get the wiring right to help with a mining project that, uh, my dad wanted me to do. I’m having trouble getting the spark I need.” A hint of annoyance had crept into his voice during his last sentence.

Shayne, who had been startled a bit by the mention of the wiring blowing up, took a bite of his pastrami sandwich to calm himself.

“Would it be anything like wiring a car?” he asked very thickly, as his mouth was full of sandwich. He swallowed and continued, “I know how; my dad is a mechanic, he taught me.”

Noah looked up toward the sky as he considered this. 

“Huh…” he said quietly. “Well… I suppose it probably would be similar. The trigger to blow the charge would be a lot like turning a key to start a car… and instead of sparking the engine it would spark the explosives. Why didn’t I consider that?”

Shayne continued eating his sandwich while Noah worked this information through. He was swallowing his last bite when Noah turned back toward him.

“You said you knew how to do it right?” he asked. 

Shayne nodded. “It’s easy once you know what you’re doing.” He said while opening his Gatorade bottle.

Noah grinned at him. “So can you show me? Tonight?” he asked eagerly.

Shayne almost choked on a gulp of his Gatorade. “I mean yeah, I can, my nights are pretty free without practice.” He said, and then paused to cough. He cleared his throat. “I’m on house arrest though.” He pointed to his ankle monitor. “I have to be home by 5 o’clock.”

Noah looked down at the ankle monitor with mild interest, then looked back up at him. “No problem, I can ride my bike to your house. We’ll tell your parents we have a school project or something.” He said casually.

Shayne fidgeted. If he was going to ask about his hair now would be the time. “Hey Noah? You, uh, think you could do me a favor and fix my hair somehow in return?” He fidgeted again and started pulling blades of grass out of the lawn. “I really didn’t want it like this.” He said unnecessarily. 

Shayne looked up again to see Noah looking at him kindly, and with a faint air of curiosity. “Yeah, I should be able to help. I’ll pick some things up at the store before I ride over.”

The bell rang. Both boys stood up and walked back into the school. Shayne began walking toward his math class, and Noah went the opposite way toward study hall.

Both were feeling far more optimistic than they had when the day began.


	5. Keith

Keith Leak Jr. slung his school bag over his shoulder and waved goodbye to Lasercorn as he made his way toward the local bus station a few blocks away. Lasercorn did not return his wave; he was annoyed with Keith for bailing on him again. For more than a year he and Lasercorn would go to the main part of town and hang with a couple of guys from Cali grove high and even some from Eastern Heights technological college. They would smoke and dare each other do things that Keith knew were stupid. His Grandmother would have murdered him on the spot if she’d found out how he was spending his afternoons. 

But Keith’s Grandmother was not why he’d been skipping out on going to the hangout with Lasercorn for the past couple of weeks. His mother was.

Keith arrived at the bus station and sat on the bench to wait for the number 9 route to arrive. He hated sitting there waiting while the other kids walked or rode by the stop, but he had no bike and he had no car, and the way home was much too long to walk, and he had resolved a few weeks ago that he would not take rides home with his friends.

So the bus it was.

Keith pulled out his wallet and rifled through to find his bus pass. He had now been waiting for five minutes and his bus was due any minute. He pulled his pass out and looked up just in time to see Shayne slouching in the passenger’s seat of his father’s car with the window rolled all the way down and his fingers drumming lazily against the side of the car. This was the third time Shayne had caught his eye today. Keith was usually better than most at overlooking Shayne’s new fire truck hair because he spent so much time with Lasercorn and his bright orange hair, so it was very unusual for him to notice Shayne as often as he had today.

He had seen him being dropped off by his father this morning, looking miserable. Then he had noticed him again in the cafeteria, looking around for someone. Keith had checked the cafeteria at the end of the lunch period, but he had been nowhere in sight. Had he found whoever he was looking for?

And now here he was again looking a lot less miserable than he had this morning. Keith wondered what had happened to cheer him up.

Then Keith turned his head the other direction and saw someone who drove all thoughts of Shayne and his odd behavior today out of his mind.

Keith stood up. “Noah! Hey, NOAH!” he shouted at the blue haired boy, who had just ridden by on his blue and purple bicycle. Noah stopped and turned his head to see who had called him and then hesitated. Keith knew he was trying to decide whether he could get away with pretending he hadn’t heard him still now that he’d stopped his bike to look.

Keith waved him over and walked just outside the bus stop. Noah turned his bike around and walked it over while still astride. He looked surprised and mildly suspicious.

Keith fiddled with his wide brimmed hat. He knew he was lucky Noah hadn’t brushed him off- the last time he’d tried to speak to his former best friend he’d been completely shut down. Keith didn’t blame Noah; Keith had been selfish and awful to him in middle school when he’d tried to confide in Keith that he was missing his dad (all in all Keith had been insanely jealous that Noah had a strong relationship with his father when Keith had never known his), and then in high school he’d stood by countless times while Lasercorn had knocked him over or slammed him into lockers.

“Look dude, I just wanted to say sorry for Lasercorn, you know, this morning. It wasn’t cool of him.” Keith said.

Noah had been looking at him curiously as he started speaking, but as Keith finished he looked down and away. “S’fine.” He said quietly.

Keith shuffled his feet. “I, uh, I’m sorry about your dad too. I liked him, walking the trails with you both was always cool.” He wanted to say more, but he could tell this was making Noah uncomfortable.

Noah was fidgeting. “Yeah I’m sorry he’s gone too. Listen, I don’t get why you are talking to me. You’ve avoided me since he was deployed the first time and now that he’s dead you reach out again and honestly, you’ve been awful to me. So thank you for the sentiment but I have to go.” He said quickly. Keith heard an undercurrent of frustration running through his would-be calm voice.

Keith sighed. “Okay. I’ll see you around then.” He said. “And I really am sorry, about everything.”

Noah, who had been turning his bike around, turned his head to look at Keith. “If you’re really sorry, then prove it.” He said.

Then he turned and rode away.

Keith thought about Noah’s parting words as he sat on the bus waiting for the community hill stop. He had been regretting losing Noah as his friend for years now (he realized he was the only person who’d ever been truly real with him) and here was his chance to fix everything. He could fix it; he wasn’t liking hanging with Lasercorn anymore, not since his Mom, so he wasn’t afraid of losing Lasercorn’s friendship. 

He could fix this.

Keith got off the bus and strode toward the Community Hill trailer park. This was where Keith and his mother, and more recently his grandmother, lived. Keith adored his grandmother, but he was not happy she had come to stay more permanently.

Keith knew his mother had always had a rougher time providing for them than other single parents; she had dropped out of college when she had Keith so she could take care of him. She eventually got a job at the Smosh diner, which was the most only old school diner left in town owing to its prime location at the base of the old mining mountain that was the base of the small town that was Eastern Heights. She had worked up the ranks there and she and Keith had gotten on fine.

But recently Keith’s mother had looked more and more run down, much more than usual. Whenever Keith asked if she was feeling alright she did what she’d always done- flipped his hat off by the brim and told him he was being silly- but Keith had a feeling she was lying to him.

And then about three weeks ago he’d come home to find his mother in her bed and his grandmother bustling around in the tiny kitchen.

It was his grandmother who had broken the news to him about the Cancer.

Some days things were like normal, and his mother was her usual self. Some days she was too weak to leave her bed. Keith wasn’t sure which was worse.

Keith entered their trailer to find today was an ‘in bed’ day. His mother was fast asleep in bed looking pale. His grandmother was sitting at the table. It was clear to Keith she had just been crying.

“You’re home early, love” she said to him kindly.

Keith nodded aimlessly. “Didn’t feel like doing study group today.” He said. That was what he’d told his mother he was doing when he was out with Lasercorn. He put down his backpack. He was suddenly wishing he’d gone with Lasercorn after all. “I’m going for a walk okay? I’ll be back for dinner.”

“That’s fine. Don’t wander into the woods.” His grandmother told him.

Keith promised he wouldn’t, then left the trailer and turned and strode toward the woods. He knew a lot of trails; he and Noah had discovered a few that led to the side of the mountain that he and Noah had explored often with Noah’s father. His feet took him down a familiar trail, and about halfway to the mountain side Keith sat beneath a large oak tree. He leaned against the bark and blew out a long breath. No Lasercorn nagging him, no teacher’s sympathy, no heavy weight of his mother’s illness out here in the woods. Only the leaves rustling in the breeze and the birds chirping. Noah had taught him birdcalls, but he didn’t bother trying to remember them.

It felt nice to shut his brain off for a while.


	6. Courtney

Courtney Miller looked down on the town of Eastern Heights from her special spot on the mining mountain that the scrubby town had been built around.

From this height, it almost looked pretty. But Courtney knew better by now.

Courtney adjusted her black beanie, pulling it down over the top over her ears so her messy waves stayed under control. It was windy in her favorite spot, which was pretty high up on the mountain, and it wasn’t like she could pull her hair back anymore, she’d cut it too short for that.

Yup. She’d cut her own hair. Her mother had had a fit about it too, but she was tired of fitting the status quo, in both her family and this much too small town. She had never fit any sort of status quo personality wise, so why not look the part? She liked her hair better like this, and it was a relief to wear jeans that weren’t so skin tight if she wanted, usually paired with one of her many flannels (all of which her mother called “ratty”).

She fiddled with a mechanical pencil and stared at the sketchbook in her lap. She’d been up on the mountain almost all day. She’d attempted school this morning for a half hour to appease her mother; she’d been downright furious with Courtney when the principal of Eastern Heights High had called to discuss Courtney’s truancy. But Lee had cornered her almost immediately to taunt her about that stupid photo and Courtney had left school after homeroom. She didn't want to, or have to, deal with that for the rest of the day.

She was running out of ideas on things to draw- once she was out of ideas or if it got too dark she would have to leave. She knew eventually she would have to go home and face her mother, who would probably have received another call from the principal. She pictured her dad (who had been elected Mayor of Eastern Heights last year) shaking his head at her, quietly disappointed, and her little brothers peering at her from around the corner of a room (so their mother wouldn’t see them listening) with wide eyes. Her older sister, the only person in her family who had attempted to understand her, had left to go to college across the country.

She shook her head to clear the mental image and flipped through her sketchbook to spark her inspiration. Courtney loved art; simple pencil sketches were her favorite, but she was great with a paintbrush too. She was also self-taught on guitar and ukulele. She had asked for art and music lessons countless times, but her parents had never agreed. No one else in her family was interested in art or music. It was all science, math, and politics for them.

Being the black sheep really sucked.

Courtney skimmed past the pages she had of various super heroes she’d drawn, past the cartoons she’d made of her history teacher, past the embarrassingly detailed drawing she’d done of Karen. That had been a huge mistake, even without the photo that resulted from it. Karen had just been so nice, overly so, and Courtney had taken the signals the wrong way. Up to that moment she had been careful to hide her sexuality; she’d been certain the smallness of the town would lead to small minded thinking, with the added plus that her mother and father did not approve whatsoever. They were both very old school regarding sexuality and hoped it was a phase Courtney would grow out of, which Courtney always thought was stupid.

The photo was a hot topic in her house right now- nuclear hot. It was not like she meant to send a picture of her bare ass to Karen, she wasn’t about to go that far that fast with anyone. She just hadn’t been paying attention to the background of the picture and that was that. Added to the fact that it was actually that jerk Sohinki on the other end of the phone and not Karen, she was toast.

Courtney flipped through a few more pages. She’d drawn the view from her spot, her brothers playing with the chemistry set, her father asleep on the recliner with the television still on. She flipped past the rough sketch she’d done of Olivia Sui, captain of the dance team, leaning against her locker. Olivia was someone she sometimes couldn’t help drawing- everything she did seemed to be effortlessly perfect. It made her fun to draw.

She arrived back at the blank page she’d been contemplating with no fresh ideas. She sighed and leaned back against the piece of the mountain that jutted up behind her, creating a backrest. She leaned her head back as far as she could go and took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She really did not want to go home yet.

Suddenly a spike of fear ripped through the unease she’d been feeling. An image flashed behind her closed eyes, and then as suddenly as they had come, both left her. Courtney sat up, grabbed her pencil and as quickly as she could sketched out what she remembered of the image.

It was a girl, no older than she was. She had long dark hair, and a devilish smile played at her lips. Though Courtney’s pencil hadn’t been able to show it, her eyes had been bright and almost unnaturally green, and she was looking up at Courtney from the page with a taunting gaze.

Courtney had lived a couple of different places before her family had settled in Eastern Heights three years ago, but Courtney was certain that she had never come across any girl who’d looked like this before. Who was she? And why had Courtney been able to see her so vividly? It was almost as though her image had come from the mountain itself.

Disconcerted, Courtney packed her sketch book and pencil back into her school bag, stood up, and slung the bag over her shoulder. It was still light outside, but it was definitely time for her to head home. She knew there would be a long lecture and probably also a Saturday detention from her principal for her truancy in her future, but she didn’t care anymore. She was still unnerved by the image she’d drawn.

Courtney wished she had someone to talk about it with.


	7. Shayne

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many apologies for the long wait! My best friend got married this weekend and I was in the wedding, so there was a lot to do!

Shayne paced around in his unusually messy room, running his fingers through his hair. He was beginning to think he’d imagined his earlier conversation with Noah. It was nearing two hours since school had let out, and there was still no sign of the blue-haired boy. Shayne wished he had thought to get Noah’s cell phone number, but when Noah had suggested coming over in the first place Shayne had been so caught off guard that he hadn’t even thought of it.

Shayne stopped pacing and began picking things up off the floor to keep himself busy. His room was never normally as messy as it was currently- his bed was usually unmade, but he never spent as much time in his room as he had for the past week, so there were books and clothes strewn around the floor and empty cups he had used for water stacked haphazardly on his bedside table.

He was making the stack of cups neater with the intent of bringing them downstairs to put them in the dishwasher when the doorbell rang, startling and causing him to knock over the stack.

Noah had come.

Shayne quickly picked up the cups again and hurried down to the kitchen to dump them into the sink and greet Noah before he had to spend too long explaining to his parents why he was there. Shayne knew Noah was really smart, but he definitely seemed to be unnecessarily nervous sometimes, and his parents were strict so Shayne wasn’t sure how well Noah would do on his own. 

“It’s a science project, we have class together.” Noah was saying to Shayne’s parents as Shayne stepped into the front hallway. “We have to try and generate power from different foods and see which are the most effective. Oh hey, Shayne.” Noah had spotted Shayne and gave him a shy smile “Sorry I’m a little later than I expected to be, I had to help my Mom with something when I got home.”

“That’s alright” Shayne said with a smile. He was wrong to doubt Noah; it turned out his was a great actor. Shayne’s mother was smiling at Noah. His father was staring at Noah’s blue hair.

Shayne’s mother turned toward him. “Shayne, you should have told us you had a friend coming over today.” She said.

“I know Mom, I’m sorry. Come on Noah, let’s go upstairs.” Said Shayne. He was eager to get Noah out of the room before his father said anything to him.

Shayne and Noah went up the stairs and Shayne led the way down the hall to his room. He swung open the door, stepped inside and flopped down on his red beanbag chair. Noah was looking around with mild interest.

“You know you match your room now right? With your hair, and your gray sweatshirt?” Noah asked as he settled himself on the gray swivel chair near Shayne’s desk. Shayne looked down, then looked around. It was true; his room had a black, gray, and red theme, and today he had chosen to wear black jeans, a red t-shirt, and a gray zip up sweatshirt. Added to his current hair color he matched his room pretty perfectly.

Shayne ran a hand through his hair, slightly embarrassed. “Yeah, uh, I guess I do.” He said with an awkward laugh. Noah barely seemed to notice. He was pulling things out of the backpack he’d brought with him. He held up the pile of wires he’d been fiddling with at lunch.

“So you think you can get these to work?” Noah asked eagerly.

“Yeah, should be a cinch once I figure out which wires are which.” Shayne said. He took the wires from Noah and started looking them over. “Why do you need something to explode for a mining project anyway?’

Noah shrugged. “That’s the easiest way to dig into the side. My dad always said the old mining mountain still has cool and interesting things to unearth, and I can’t really spend a whole day manually digging.” He said nonchalantly.

Shayne looked up from the wiring. “You’re doing this at the old mine? Isn’t that restricted?”

Noah was examining his nails. “Yup.” He said. “I bike there all the time, no one really checks to see people stay out. I see some of the girls from school around all the time.”

Shayne went back to the wiring. “What do the girls do up there?” he asked.

Noah sounded bored. “I haven’t really paid them much attention, I’ve been more focused on mapping out the mountain when I’m up there.”

Shayne worked in silence for a few moments. He thought about how strange it was to have Noah in his room. Before today he had barely spoken 10 words to him in the many years they’d been classmates, and now they were in Shayne’s room together working on wiring to make something explode.

What a weird day. 

Shayne held up the wires he’d been working on. “This should work- connect these to the ignition point and these to the explosive.” He said, indicating certain wires. Noah nodded to show he understood. “Can you fix my hair now?”

After about a half hour, Shayne was looking in the mirror at his new hair. It definitely wasn’t what he’d been expecting. He’d told Noah he’d had dark blond hair prior to the incident, and he’d thought Noah would just put it back to normal, or as close to normal as possible. Instead, he was looking at dark blonde streaks mixed in with a much more muted red.

And to his surprise, he really liked it.


	8. Olivia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's two chapters in one day to make up for the long wait!

Olivia beat the familiar-to-her path through the woods up to the peak of the mining mountain to her favorite thinking spot, which was a little grove overlooking the town with a river running a few feet below. Olivia liked this spot because it was about a 15 minute hike from her backyard, and no one ever came this way. It was the perfect place to be alone for a while.

And after this afternoon, Olivia really needed to be alone for a while.

She reached the grove and sat down, leaning her head against the tree. She listened to the water rushing below her.

She still wasn’t sure what had come over her. Practice had been fine- she had had her girls work through one of their most difficult routines yet, and they had made good progress. It was what happened right after practice that was the problem.

Olivia knew she shouldn’t have punched Sohinki- she certainly hadn’t meant to knock his tooth out. She had just reached her breaking point over that stupid photo of that Miller girl. She still didn’t understand why this particular photo bothered her so much when she hadn’t cared at all about any of the others before, but she definitely did care. A lot.

Lee had teased her all afternoon about not having looked at the photo during history class. Olivia wasn’t even sure how she’d discovered she hadn’t seen it; maybe she hadn’t acted as usual when it came to photos like this. And the teasing was really annoying to her. After practice Sohinki had joined Lee in the teasing and began interjecting his own theories about why the photo bothered her.

And that was what pushed her over the edge.

Sohinki had to be taken to his dentist immediately to attempt to put the tooth she punched out back, and she had received punishment very swiftly. Violence, of course, was against the school’s code of conduct. She’d been saddled with Saturday detention for the rest of the school year and her immediate removal from the dance team.

She had fallen from social grace as quickly as Shayne Topp had.

To top everything off, her parents had been fighting again when she’d arrived home. It hadn’t even been about her; evidently, her mother had caught her father in the act of meeting with another woman whenever he went out of town on business. Again. Olivia wasn’t sure her family would come out of it as well as it had before this time.

All in all, it had been a horrible afternoon.

Olivia leaned her head back to look up at the stars. She tried to imagine what her life would be like without the dance team. Would she still even have any friends now? Shayne had been outcast; who was to say she wouldn’t be as well? Truth be told, she didn’t count on any of her former teammates continuing to hang out with her after this. Those who wouldn’t hate her, like Lee, would be too scared of losing their own social status.

But if that was the case, were they even her friends?

Olivia didn’t mind being alone, not in the slightest. That definitely differentiated her from a lot of her so called friends, who couldn’t seem to spend more than a moment without someone to talk to.

No, Olivia didn’t mind being alone. But one of her greatest fears was being lonely.

Yes, there was a difference. Unlike her former teammates, she didn’t need to constantly have someone around or be physically talking to someone, but she really did need the knowledge that if she needed someone they would be there for her. She had scarcely had that with her parents, so she’d put herself at the top of the high school social hierarchy to guarantee she would have someone there for her in that since. But in just a few hours she’d lost that security, both with her family and her “friends”.

Olivia did not like the thought of that.

What she was realizing, out here in the woods listening to the river, was that she had been generally unhappy with her life up to this point. Her family life had been slowly crawling toward shambles, she had surrounded herself with friends that she had brought into her circle simply for convenience, and the only thing in her little world that she actually enjoyed was expressing herself with dance.

Now that she no longer had the dance team, and her home life was once again a giant question mark, she knew what she wanted to do going forward. She wanted to find real friends; people that she let into her life not just because she needed them, but because she wanted them there. People she could actually talk to about her life and things that mattered instead of the mindless gossip she was used to. This wasn’t a tragedy after all- this was her chance to start over and make her life into one that actually made her happy.

Saturday detention, though, was really going to suck.


	9. Courtney

Courtney slunk low in her classroom seat. She’d gotten to detention slightly earlier than she figured most people would show up so she would have her choice of seat. She wanted to sit in the back of the room in a center row so she would have a view of the whole room. Once she was bored of homework, and maybe had given the ‘better choices’ workbook that they gave everyone who had earned Saturday detention a once over, she wanted to have a range of drawing options.

Courtney had never had a detention on Saturday. Nowhere she had ever been to school had offered Saturday detention, and she had never before done anything to warrant detention before. She knew immediately upon hearing the rules of Saturday detention that she was going to hate it. It started at 9 and ended at noon, talking was not allowed, eating was not allowed, and (strictly speaking) the only activities allowed were homework and the workbook. Courtney had missed four days of school without permission from parents and had therefore earned eight of these wonderful detentions, with the promise of two more for every day missed in the future.

Courtney pulled her beanie lower over her hair and adjusted her black and gray flannel as more kids who had earned detention began trickling in. Noah Grossman sat himself in the first row three seats back and immediately started pulling books out of his bag. Courtney had English class with him and never would have pegged him as a detention kind of guy, but Noah didn’t seem uncomfortable at all. Courtney wondered what he’d done.

More and more people began to file in. Courtney only really paid attention to the ones she knew, even vaguely. A girl with light purple hair Courtney thought might be on the dance team took a seat in the back corner and leaned her head against the wall. Shayne Topp took a seat next to Noah. Of course Courtney knew about him; his whole prank gone wrong was probably the only reason she and her butt picture weren’t the biggest news at school. He’d lightened his hair- it actually looked like he’d dyed it on purpose now.

Lasercorn’s bright orange hair caught her eye. He walked into the room and caught sight of Noah, and as he walked by Noah’s desk he knocked Noah’s pencil case off the desk. 

“Oh, sorry man.” Lasercorn said in a would-be casual voice. “Let me help you with that.” He bent over to pick up the pencil case. Courtney narrowed her eyes. Lasercorn had definitely knocked the pencil case over on purpose.

Sure enough, Lasercorn stood up and threw the pencil case across the room. Courtney wished she could see the look on Noah’s face. Lasercorn was smiling maliciously at him. He turned to walk away when Shayne Topp stood up.

“Oh I get it.” Shayne said lightly. “You’re the bully of detention. How dumb can you be?” he was laughing. Lasercorn’s malicious smile dropped instantly. He took a swing at Shayne, and another, but Shayne dodged both easily.

And then Shayne slapped Lasercorn. The room fell silent, waiting to see what was coming next.

Lasercorn seemed shocked. “Did you just slap me?” he asked incredulously.

Shayne was still smiling. “Yeah. Weird, right?” Lasercorn stared at him. Shayne continued. “I would guess we are both going to be seeing a lot of each other here, so let’s make a deal. Stay away from me, and him, and we can be cool. Got it?”

Lasercorn glared and stomped to the back corner opposite the girl with purple hair. Shayne, still grinning, sat back down. Noah retrieved his pencil case from the far side of the room. Courtney caught a glimpse of his expression; his face was very red and he looked bemused.

Mr. Raub walked in quickly, looking harried. “Welcome to detention. Approved homework only, or the better choices workbook.” He said as if on autopilot. He held up a copy of the better choices workbook only to have it pulled out of his hands by a latecomer.

“Sorry.” Muttered the girl. Slender, long raven hair, pink converse shoes. 

Olivia Sui.

Courtney barely heard Mr. Raub say “It’s fine, and good morning.” She stared as Olivia sat in the first available seat, brush her long hair over her shoulder. She wasn’t wearing her dance team varsity jacket today, but rather a pink and black bomber jacket. Courtney wondered why, and why she was in detention in the first place.

At least she would have a good sketch from today.


End file.
